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Inuit Answer Hollywood With Sealfie Photo Booths, Giant Group Pic

ICTMN Staff

4/10/14

The war of images over the seal hunt is going as epic as a Hollywood movie.

The indigenous land claims group Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) is running a photo booth on April 10 and staging a humongous group “sealfie” on Friday April 11 in protest of some celebrity activists' stance against the seal hunt. Meanwhile the Humane Society of the United States, which is the beneficiary of the donation generated by the famous photo tweeted from the Oscars by host Ellen DeGeneres, says it does not oppose the small, sustainable Inuit seal hunt, just the commercial one. The Inuit say that is not the point. They are using the attention to educate the world on their history and culture.

The fracas started at the end of March, when Academy Awards host DeGeneres tweeted a star-studded selfie from the Oscars that netted the Humane Society $1.5 million in donations. The Humane Society, and DeGeneres, strongly oppose the seal hunt in Canada.

The Inuit were caught in the middle. A teenager made a video. A journalist created a hashtag. The sealfie movement was born.

For its part, the Humane Society of Canada says the Inuit have got it all wrong and are protesting something that the group never objected to.

“We have never opposed the Inuit subsistence seal hunt that occurs in Canada’s North,” said Humane Society International/Canada executive director Rebecca Aldworth in a statement on April 8. “Animal protection groups oppose the commercial seal slaughter, which occurs in Atlantic Canada and is almost entirely conducted by non-aboriginal people.”

But to put it in these terms is to completely misunderstand the significance of the seal hunt and the role it plays in Inuit relations with the world, NTI leaders said.

“Various animal rights groups now say they do not oppose the Inuit seal hunt because it is sustainable and humane and provides food and clothing for people,” said NTI CEO James Arreak in a statement. “It is true that Nunavut’s seal hunt is humane and sustainable. It is also a commercial harvest. Inuit sell sealskins and seal products.”

The trade of seal and sealskin products is right up there with those of other animals that Inuit have harvested for millennia, including polar bear skins, narwhal tusks, walrus ivory, caribou meat and caribou antler products, the statement said. Moreover, the images being used to portray the seal hunt are for the most part no longer used.

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And we will continue to oppose the *commercial* sale of the skins of animals. It doesn't matter how humanely you believe your methods of slaughter are. It is unnecessary and the people to which you want to sell these skin do not need them, except to display opulence at wealthy galas. I would say your picture in this article completely contradicts the claims that this destroys a subsistence lifestyle. You don't need that cape in your fossil-fuel heated office!